…this year – for which my humble apologies:
…to friends, acquaintances and gentle readers…
…from the Kickass Canada Girl and the Imperceptible Immigrant…
we wish you a safe and peaceful Christmas and a Happy Hogmany!
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Tags: Celebration, Christmas, Photo
…Holy Moley – I can’t feel my face degrees!
The winter weather is doing its bit to make the run in to Christmas something of a challenge! Notice that I didn’t qualify that with: “Here on the west coast of Canada“. I am well aware that we are not alone in experiencing exceptional climatic conditions. We have had quite a lot to do of late (as of course have many people at this time of year) and needing to keep a constant eye on the weather only makes things more exacting.
Here are some ‘highlights’ – complete with pictures:
Last weekend we made a overnight trip up island to Nanaimo – for a Christmas visit with The Girl’s mum – stopping on the way back on the Sunday for lunch with a dear friend in Duncan. As ever we took the Mill Bay ferry to avoid traversing the Malahat (always a good idea when there is snow in the air).
We figured that the snow would start to fall at some point during this trip and sure enough it did – whilst we were in Nanaimo. We stayed overnight in the Coast Bastion hotel overlooking Nanaimo harbour – with which we are very familiar from previous visits.
We had a lovely visit with both family and friends – dined splendidly at the Nanaimo Golf Club, the Minnoz restaurant at the Coast Bastion – and, of course, with our lovely friend in Duncan. Happy Christmas to you all.
Once back in Victoria the winter storm really swept in and soon everything disappeared under about a foot of snow. This was the view from my studio window by Tuesday.
The Girl had taken most of the week off as well-earned pre-Christmas break, but the weather put paid to any notions of a relaxing run in to the festival itself. The Volunteer Agency of which The Girl is one of the mainstays delivers meals to elderly folk every week – with teams of volunteers driving routes around Greater Victoria to make deliveries to more than seventy locations. Given the weather it would have been totally unreasonable to expect these excellent volunteers – many of them elderly themselves – to be out on the roads in such treacherous conditions. It fell to a number of us folk with 4x4s equipped with snow tyres to get the food parcels out to the elderly in time for Christmas. This is – of course – is just the sort of thing at which Lorelei excels and she did not let us down. Here we are en route…
I guess the big question now is – will we get a white Christmas? Today is the 23rd and temperatures are starting to rise – though to this point they have only reached the ‘freezing rain on top of compacted snow‘ phase – so today we are going nowhere! We will see how things pan out tomorrow.
“If you want to change the world, start off by making your bed”
William H. McRaven
When The Girl and I started living together – many moons ago now (and long before this online journal was even a glint in the eye) – one of the first things that she suggested as a means of improving our life together was that we should purchase a new bed. Her reasoning was that – since sleep is such an important restorative for both the body and the mind and given that we spend a considerable percentage of our lives between the sheets (perchance in the land of slumber!) – we should ensure that we had nothing but the finest of tools with which to work. This – naturally – appealed to me as being an admirable ethic, so out we set to purchase a bed.
We were fortunate enough to find a really good deal (end of line for this particular model!) on a splendid hand-made Vispring bed, the which we have enjoyed over the years since – dragging said item halfway around the world with us to our new Canadian home.
Now, the bed has a thirty year warranty and would doubtless go on serving us well for some time to come – were it not for a couple of factors that we had not previously foreseen.
The first is that even really good mattresses do decline over the decades. Our mattress was split between a firm side (mine) and a soft side (The Girl’s). Her side had become less supportive over the years and was eventually not doing enough to keep her comfortable and ache-free throughout the night.
I made reference to the other matter in a couple of posts earlier this year. It involved something of a sleep issue that I was experiencing and – if you really must know the details – I recommend those musings to you in preference to re-hashing things here now. Anyway – one of the outcomes of that episode was that The Girl and I decided that it would be a good idea to purchase a bigger bed.
Something I did not know before moving to the land of ‘Big‘ (but which in retrospect should have been obvious) is that bed sizes here are very different here to those back in the Old Country. Our Vispring bed was a UK King size. Here the same sized bed is but a Queen! Standard King-sized beds here are a whole ten inches wider than was ours!
Long story short… we are now the proud owners of a rather lovely wooden Canadian King-sized bed, complete with a splendid multi-layer latex mattress (the which is a first for us both).
The down-side of up-sizing one’s bed is – of course – that one’s duvets and bedding no longer fit and must at some point be replaced. In the short term we are managing with a couple of UK King-sized duvets, but the question is – how to deploy them. Does one go for the (apparently) European approach of having an overlap in the middle of the bed (which looks rather odd and tends to leave far too much duvet hanging over the sides of the bed)? We may well adopt this approach when we get around to purchasing new duvets, but utilizing a couple of twin-sized duvets rather than the UK Kings.
In the meantime we have opted temporarily to sleep Burrito-style – the which is somewhat restricting when it comes to contact but is oddly effective in all other ways.
Oh well! First-world problems, of course!
Troy ‘Bubba’ Cook
1969 – 2022
RIP
The Chanteuse and I were greatly saddened to hear over the weekend of the passing of Troy Cook. Troy was a creative force who was a writer, artist and musician and was born, lived and worked in Fernie, BC.
Earlier this year, in spite of his illness, Troy agreed to create the artwork for the recent Anam Danu album – ‘Soul Making‘. He most generously refused to accept any payment for his work – saying:
“I like to promote original music and this is my way of helping other musicians”.
Troy was a long standing friend of The Chanteuse’s husband – they having known each other for 37 years – and he was much loved by the whole family.
In this video clip Troy explains how his art helped him to deal with his illness.
Our sympathies and thoughts are with Troy’s family.
Rest In Peace
In complete contrast to the experience described in my last post – “Every exit“…
Regular ingesters of these random(ish) gobbets will no doubt feel completely familiar by now with Barney Bentall’s Cariboo Express – that charitable roadshow of assorted musicians and other performers that makes a three night pitstop at the Mary Winspear Centre in Sidney each November – raising much needed cash for the Sidney Lions Food Bank. We have been in Canada for over seven years now… we have traveled on the Cariboo Express at least six times since we arrived… I have written posts about it at least five times!
I was not intending to pen another post this year, in the wake of our annual pilgrimage a couple of weeks back. I thought that I had pretty much covered the subject in previous years and the last thing I would want to do is to bore you – the gentle reader…
However…
…each time we surrender ourselves to the oncoming Express – regardless of how tired we may be or how weighed down we are with the burden of the world’s (and our own) problems upon our shoulders – a couple of hours spent in the company of this exuberant assemblage of musicians of all ages… and we find ourselves once again rejuvenated by the spirit of bonhomie and love.
In short – the music and dancing weaves its magic spell and we are once again recharged with a joyous zest for life and all that is good about it.
Those who know me well would never have expected me to be so taken with this particular genre of music (sort of country-ish) and yet I take great delight each year in attending the show and having my faith in live music emphatically restored.
It helps, of course, that the Cariboo Express crew so clearly love doing the whole tour themselves. The ensemble seems to grow larger each year. This time round the cavalcade winding its way around BC comprised some nineteen performers who – at various points – assembled together on the Charlie White Theatre stage.
Good thing it is a particularly wide stage!
To Barney and to the whole crew – thank you again for this year’s fabulous show. See you next year!
Tags: Barney Bentall, Cariboo Express, Celebration, Music
“We do on stage things that are supposed to happen off. Which is a kind of integrity, if you look on every exit as being an entrance somewhere else.”
Tom Stoppard, ‘Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead’
This weekend just passed The Girl and I finally got to see a play again at The Belfry here in Victoria (for the previous failed attempts – see here).
Actually – that should more accurately be: ‘Half a play’!…
Oh dear!
In all of my (and latterly, our) many years of theatre going I can count the number of performances out of which I have walked on the fingers of one hand… and still have had spares! It is not something that I like to do and nor is it something that I feel comfortable about doing. As a thespist myself I think it is jolly bad form to give up on any creative performance at the interval (it is no co-incidence that a fair amount of theatre for and by young people has no interval – thus reducing the opportunity for audience members so to do).
I have very occasionally ducked out of a school production – usually because the whole thing has been a huge error of judgement on somebody’s part and well beyond the capabilities of those involved. I have equally occasionally removed myself from adult (and professional) productions when the piece itself has turned out to be deeply disappointing – though this has happened but extremely rarely.
In this case we found ourselves at a loss to know what to make of the play – which is an even more rare occurrence. I would feel guilty that we had not prepared ourselves adequately in advance to know what we might expect, except that our frantic visits to the InterWebNet at the interval did not really turn up any rationale for boycotting the piece.
I am not going to name the play – or the author (though he is Canadian). It is not a new play; having been around for several decades. Previous reviews from elsewhere in the world seemed reasonable. The work is billed as a Black Comedy, though it seemed to us to lack a basic requirement of a comedy – namely the delivery of laughter. The first act seemed to me to essentially consist of the same ‘humourous’ twist repeated over and over.
We found it impossible to empathise with, or to believe in, either of the characters presented to us, or indeed with their situation. Even once we realised that the second act must contain some sort of plot/character twist that would somehow justify the inertia of the first act – we did not feel that the piece (or the characters involved in it) had done anywhere near enough to have earned our continued engagement.
We thus absented ourselves for the second half, went across the road for a coffee and struck up a fascinating conversation with someone whom we had not previously met…
Much more entertaining!
Tags: Drama, plays, The Belfry, Theatre
Doddie Weir
1970 – 2022
RIP
Very sad to report that the much loved Scottish and British and Irish Lions lock forward, Doddie Weir, passed away at the end of last week at the age of 52. Doddie was a fixture in the Scottish squad at around the time that Rugby turned professional in the 1990s and was a fan-favourite with the Murrayfield crowd. He turned out sixty one times for his country, played for the Barbarians six times and went on the 1997 British and Irish Lions tour to South Africa.
Weir is known just as much, however, for the time after his retirement from the game. It was announced in 2017 that he had been diagnosed with Motor Neurone Disease (MND), with the prediction that he would be unable to walk within a year. Instead of sitting back to await the inevitable Weir threw himself into campaigning and fundraising to help find a cure for MND, setting up the “My Name’5 Doddie” foundation which had, by June 2022, raised in excess of £8 million.
The “My Name’5 Doddie” foundation website obituary includes the following:
“Since making his condition known, Doddie has championed the campaign for more to be done for sufferers of the disease, both in terms of finding a possible cure, and with the treatment and welfare of patients and their carers.
Doddie’s work over the past five years saw him recognised with several honours and accolades, including an OBE, presented by Queen Elizabeth II for his services to rugby, MND research and the Borders community. He also collected Honorary Doctorates from both Glasgow Caledonian and Abertay Universities, as well as becoming a recipient of the prestigious Edinburgh Award. Within sport, a trophy named after him is now contested between Scotland and Wales, and he became recipient of the Helen Rollason Award at the BBC Sports Personality of the Year ceremony in 2019.
He also became a best-selling and nominated author, oversaw the design of his own distinctive tartan, and was captured on canvas by artist Gerard Burns, the painting now hung in the National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh.”
A giant of a man in every sense and a Rugby legend, Doddie Weir will be sadly missed.
Tags: Doddie Weir, Loss, Remembrance, RIP, Rugby
…from a lost season (see previous post).
Whatever I personally feel about this time of year (and of the month of November in particular) there is no denying that there are some pretty images to be captured. Being a sharing kind of guy I always like to pass such things on to the gentle reader (or viewer!).
These are quite seasonal:
…and that mountain is still visible (though by no means so every day!)…
There is good, if somewhat nippy, walking to be done – in Centennial Park for instance:
“Two of us wearing raincoats
Standing solo in the sun
You and me chasing paper
Getting nowhere
On our way back home”
Lennon/MacCartney
The other day I was in Sidney, engaged upon the purchase of some comestibles. On returning to the Lexus – the which I had parked under a small tree at the far extent of the car park – I observed that a murder was in progress. A murder of crows, that is…
No sooner than I had mounted the vehicle and fired up the big V8 than one of their number flapped lazily down and took up residence on the bonnet (hood!). He looked me in the eye as a sort of challenge and let it be known that he felt disinclined to move even when I revved the engine a little. Had I not started to reverse gently out of the parking bay I think he might well just have stayed there.
Cheeky bu**er!
It is a pretty extraordinary thing – particularly here on the west coast of Canada – but we do seem to have skipped a season this year.
Completely…!
I know…! With climate change so much of the world’s weather seems to have lost track of what were once familiar patterns. It has become the norm to read of unprecedented weather cycles or events. The ‘new normal’ is clearly that there is now nothing normal about anything.
What a strange and unsettling time to be alive.
Regular readers of this journal will already have picked up references throughout this particular year of weather patterns not occurring as expected. The spring here on Vancouver Island was wet and cold and dank – and seemed to be stuck in that state for ever, instead of flowering into spring and early summer as is usual.
It wasn’t until we packed our bags and set off to Europe in July that the weather here in BC really picked up. One result of this was that exposure to the heatwaves that afflicted Europe throughout the middle of the year came as a considerable shock to the system for travelers like us.
When we returned to Canada summer seemed finally to have arrived. At the southern tip of Vancouver Island the season is usually warm and dry – with little or no rainfall for the three summer months. It was good, finally, to be able to get out into the garden to do some barbecuing and entertaining.
Come the dog days, however, when the temperatures usually fall away and the summer drought is broken by the first welcome showers of the advancing fall, the temperatures remained stubbornly in the mid twenties Celsius and there was no rain in sight. Serious concerns about the lack of rainfall were voiced and gardens and agricultural lands alike began to shows signs of stress. An Indian Summer can be a wonderful surprise at the end of a disappointing season, but when one follows an already extensive dry period farmers and gardeners start to worry.
Naturally, when the weather finally broke in late-October it did so in true ‘wet’ coast style – with yet another Atmospheric River providing us with many days rainfall in a few hours, accompanied closely by the autumn’s first wind storm.
Then, as we crossed into November, the temperatures dropped abruptly – as did the first snowfall of winter. I know that some gentle readers will still – even after all this time – cling to the notion that the whole of Canada is a snowy wasteland for much of the year. There are indeed some good reasons for so doing. Here on the west coast, however, that is not the norm; winters in Victoria are not unlike those in the south east of the UK for most years.
So – we seem to have skipped autumn (fall) this year and gone directly from late-summer to winter. I’m not sure what Mother Nature will make of all this, but I have a feeling she will adapt to it with rather more sang-froid than do we.
Brrrrr!
Tags: British Columbia, climate change, Fall, Snow, Weather, winter
…surely some mistake! How could such a thing be possible?
It has been sometime since I last mentioned the noble game of Rugby Union within these scribblings. ‘Too long!‘ – I hear you cry – and you are absolutely correct; a great deal has been going on in the sport and I am remiss not to have made mention of at least some of it.
The Girl and I have been greatly enjoying the Women’s Rugby World Cup – the which is about to arrive at its climax down in the Land of the Long White Cloud. The standard has been exhilaratingly high and the matches have for the most part been gratifyingly exciting. It also helps that the time difference means that live coverage (thanks TSN!) has been primarily in the evenings here in the Pacific Northwest. Jolly good show.
We found ourselves in something of a quandary with regard to our support last weekend when England went up against Canada in the first of the semi-finals. The winner would face either France or the hosts – the Black Ferns – in next weekend’s final and all four sides were in with a very good shout. Canada put up a terrific performance against the Old Country and pushed them to the last – losing only narrowly… though – it has to be said – not as narrowly as New Zealand, who won at the last gasp by a single point.
The mouth-watering final thus pits the Red Roses (currently ranked no: 1 in the world and on an unprecedented winning run of 30 victories) against the Black Ferns (current World Champions).
We can’t wait!
Where the rugby surfeit comes in is that the Men’s Autumn Internationals are now also under way. Since they are not being shown on the BBC this year (boo!) we have had to subscribe to DAZN to see any coverage. Having paid up we are determined to get value for money – and the schedule last weekend made that possible.
Having watched the Women’s World Cup semi finals on Friday evening – through to 1:30am PST – I was back in action for the second half of the Scotland/Fiji game (Scotland took a somewhat unconvincing win) which started at 6:15am on the Saturday. This was followed by Wales/All Blacks at 8:15 (back to school for Wales) – Ireland/South Africa (yet another famous win for the Irish) at 10:30 and France/Australia (the French – but again by a single point) at 1:00pm.
That’s a lot of rugby in 24 hours!
I didn’t have the energy to watch the England/Argentina game on Sunday (again at 6:15am!) and it sounds as though the England side felt much the same way.
I should also mention the English Premiership. Sad to see both Worcester and Wasps forced into administration and relegated this season. I feel sure that both will be back where they belong, though there are clearly financial questions to be answered across the whole of the Premiership. Rugby Union only relatively recently joined the ranks of professional sports and there is still much to be done to make things work reliably.
On the other hand, Bath Rugby (our team!) having been terrible last season (finishing bottom!) have now won a couple of games on the trot. I do so hope that this is the start of a major turnaround.
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